Secrets and Shadows (32 page)

“Is she here?” I asked after everyone had scattered to classes.

Sophie’s forehead creased, her focus somewhere else, like she was trying to hear something a great distance away. She nodded. “She gets clearer,” she breathed, “when she real y tries. I think she wishes you could see her, too.”

I looked at the same spot that held Sophie’s rapt attention. No luck. “It’s enough I know she’s around occasional y,” I assured.

“She’s always around,” Sophie corrected.

“Oh.” Thinking about my mother as witness to the quick makeout session Pietr and I had had the previous night, I muttered, “I am
so
grounded when I die.…”

Sophie chuckled.

“What’s she doing?”

“Hear no evil, see no evil … I think she means she knows when to cover her eyes and ears.”

“Mom always had a strong sense of humor.”

“She’s glad you’re staying away from Derek, too.”

“Yeah. I wish I knew why that was so important. I mean … I know he’s mixed up in some weird stuff here, but…”

“Stay clear of him, Jessie,” Sophie intoned. “No matter what. You’ve been real y lucky so far. But even luck runs out.”

Mr. Belden stepped out of his classroom, glaring. “Tardy bel in three—”

I rushed the door …

“Two—”

… slid across the floor …

“One—”

… and into the seat by Pietr.

The bel rang. Belden slapped a pink slip of paper on my desk. “Detention,” he declared.

“What? I made it…”

“Running in the hal .”

“That is absolutely unfair,” Pietr muttered.

“What was that Mr. Rusakova?” Belden asked.

Pietr paused, coming to a decision. “That’s unfair. It absolutely
sucks
.”

Another pink slip was produced. “One for you as wel .” Belden seemed quite satisfied.

But Pietr was more so.

We were mired in quadratic equations when the desk behind me lurched and I felt something hot and wet spatter across the back of my shirt. “Oh. God.” I’d know the smel anywhere.

Vomit.

Out of our seats, we al stared as Kylie Johansen convulsed on the floor, fountaining like a lawn sprinkler set on random. Belden was on the intercom, nurse on the way as Pietr and I pul ed desks away from Kylie’s writhing body.

The nurse shouted for us to clear the room. EMTs arrived so fast I wondered if Junction High kept them on stand-by. The classroom door shut. Stunned, my mouth wouldn’t. I looked at my classmates. Stephen Marx held his head like he had a migraine to beat anything, and Lynn Marretti clutched her stomach, pale and quivering. In fact, al of my classmates except Pietr looked like absolute crap. And
I
was the one coated in spew.

Mr. Belden looked at me as the EMTs rushed Kylie’s body down the hal on a stretcher. “No detention,”

he muttered, wrinkling his nose as if I was the worst thing ever smel ed in his classroom. “You’ve been punished enough.”

* * *

Pietr served detention, and Max insisted on taking Amy and me out for coffee after school since I’d ditched the nasty sweatshirt and just looked like one more raving fan of the Junction Jackrabbits, wearing my school gym shirt in public. It was remarkably civilized of him—no drive-thru or Grabbit Mart coffee for us—he parked in front of the newest and most European of the cafés crowding Junction’s Main Street.

As our smal talk waned to nearly nothing, he caught my eye.

“Pietr, Alexi and I are going out tonight.”

“Oh.” My heart sank. “Tonight?” It was suddenly too soon, too frightening. I knew time was running out. I knew the CIA wasn’t cooperating. They’d keep Mother as long as she lived
if
it guaranteed them access

—and a sense of control—over the Rusakovas. But when Wanda started trying to keep me from the Rusakova family, the wolves decided it was time to make a move against them. To get Mother out and consider a new strategy. Maybe a new location.

Dammit. With Cat cured, it left only two werewolves and one human against a nest of agents. I had strictly been told by my occasional y canine guardians I was not al owed to go.

I ran my straw along the bottom of my cup, sucking up the last bits of mocha and caramel. They didn’t taste nearly as sweet now I knew.

taste nearly as sweet now I knew.

“How bad could it be, Jessie?” Amy punched my shoulder. “They’re going out for
one
night. In Junction.

Pietr’s not looking to hook up with anyone but you.” She slid her finger around the inside of her cup to scrape off the last bits of whipped cream.

Max stared. I total y understood the title of the song “Hungry like the Wolf.”

Oblivious, Amy licked off her finger. “I mean—how much trouble can they possibly get into, in Junction?”

“Yeah,” Max said, his voice suddenly an octave lower. “How much trouble could I—we—how much trouble could
we
get into in a town this smal ?”

“With you at the wheel, too much.” I kicked him under the table for emphasis.

A brief stop at one of the half-dozen local pharmacies—seriously, how many did a town the size of Junction real y need?—and the Rusakovas were again stocked with bandages, salves, and an assortment of painkil ers and first-aid-related items.

Amy looked at Max as he fil ed the cart, and he shrugged, smiling. “You know Pietr has a predisposition for injury.”

Amy nodded, surely remembering the ATV ride when we were both so scared Pietr was dying. That had been wel before I knew Pietr had basical y been dying since he turned thirteen and normal things—like concussions and near-death experiences—meant little to his overal health.

I gawked. “I may know
that
, but I sure didn’t know you knew the word
predisposition
.”

“Not just a pretty face,” he snorted.

Amy grinned.

* * *

“So, if you guys are going out tonight, what are the girls going to do?” Amy asked.

“I’m staying over,” I mentioned.

Amy was ecstatic. “Sleepover!”

“We have strict rules about pil ow fights,” Pietr stated.

“
Da
,” Max drawled. “No pil ow fights unless the boys are present to watch.” A sly grin twisted his lips.

Amy shoved him, and Max stumbled back like her little push mattered. “We can watch a movie … play some games,” she suggested, shrugging a single shoulder. “It’l be great.”

“Yeah, but it’s stil a school night,” I pointed out. “I need to get this stupid heart project done for Bio, and we should al be asleep at a reasonable hour.” Hopeful y I could get Amy squirreled away downstairs before the boys came back with Mother. Amy was a heavy sleeper.… It might just work.

I suddenly realized I didn’t know what was supposed to happen if the boys succeeded. Why hadn’t I been told?

Cat spoke up. “I may have to leave early in the morning—catch a flight, I hope.” She continued before either Amy or I could ask
a flight to where?
“So I might need one of you to handle breakfast.”

“Please,” Max agreed.

Cat rol ed her eyes at him.

“Anyway, we’l be out al night,” Pietr said.

“Imagine us at Denny’s,” Alexi suggested to us. “Wolfing down gigantic helpings of pancakes.”

“I wil .” At least I’d try. It was far more pleasant than what they’d real y be doing.

We ordered pizza. There was an air of celebration about things. And when the moment came for the boys to leave, I got twitchy. Terrified. I knew I couldn’t go. Knew I’d be a liability. I wasn’t stealthy, I wasn’t strong. I surely couldn’t handle getting shot. But the idea of sitting in the old Queen Anne house while they risked their lives to free their mother …

Standing on the front porch, Pietr brushed a strand of hair back from my cheek and tucked it behind my ear. His fingers trailed gently down the side of my face until he cradled my chin, peering into my eyes. His breath hot against my lips, my heart pumped so fast under his intense gaze I could no longer pick out individual heartbeats; it seemed to hum along. Pietr pressed his lips against mine, his hands tracing the curve of my neck and slipping over my arms and onto my back. He wrapped them around me, pul ing me closer.

I slid my arms up and around his neck, closing my eyes and turning off my senses except those absorbing him.

I heard only Pietr’s breathing. I tasted only Pietr’s lips. I smel ed only Pietr’s wild woodsy scent. And I felt

—I felt … Pietr’s chest rising and fal ing against me. Pietr’s arms like hot steel bands squeezing me close.

Pietr’s lips racing along my jawline and pausing by my ear. He fil ed my head with his words: “There is so little time. We need to make every moment count.”

My fingers twined into the dark hair curling slightly at the nape of his neck and his breathing grew ragged. For the moment there was only us. “Easy,” he whispered. “Jess, easy.” I saw the fire crawl up in the depths of his eyes.

“I’m scared.”

“Don’t be,” he commanded. “I can’t worry about you tonight—I need to focus.”

“Of course. Don’t worry about me. But—”

“What?” he whispered, eyebrows drawing together as he looked down at me.

“Come back to me, Pietr. In one piece.”

“As you wish.” He crushed me to him, reminding me of the power he kept hidden beneath a surprisingly human-seeming skin. He covered my mouth with his and kissed me with his eyes open so I could see the slow burn I’d started.

I held on to him, fingers knotting in his shirt, sneakers climbing on to the top of his. “I’l do my best, Jess,” he promised. “For you, I always do my best.”

Alexi grabbed him, shoving him toward the car, already running in the driveway. “Come on, Max!”

Max hesitated for a moment on the porch. He looked at Amy. She met his gaze, undaunted, and answered his unspoken question. “I don’t kiss somebody who’s looking to kiss anyone but me.”

He didn’t even blink but grabbed her, dipped her, and kissed her until he’d guaranteed her knees would quake.

“Seriously?” she asked when she’d caught her breath. “You’re going out, but—
you’re
going out…?”

“What sort of reputation do I have around here?” he muttered, watching Amy’s expression from half-closed eyes.

closed eyes.

“A wel -earned one,” I answered.

“Yee-aaah.”

“Go. They’re waiting for you.”

He did, bounding down the steps and leaping into the car.

They sped away, and we turned back to the house. A house that felt oddly vacant without their wild energy.

* * *

I dropped my hand of cards when I heard the car in the drive.
Too soon
, I thought. I saw the same words

—the fear—etch across Cat’s forehead.

“What is it?”

Cat and I looked at each other, then at Amy. We’d imagined a different time line. We thought she’d be asleep when the boys rol ed back in, successful y freeing Mother.

But, now … she was awake and aware.

We lunged for the door, Cat’s fingers closing on the knob an instant before mine. Back in the dining room our chairs clattered to the floor. Cat looked at me, eyes wide, and sucked down a ragged breath.

She flung the door open, gasped, and tore down the walkway.

I stood frozen in the doorway.

“What’s going on, Jessie?” Amy asked from behind me. “You’ve lied a lot since your mom died. And I get it. The truth sucks most days. But—”

I felt the change in the air as Amy turned to look the way Cat had run.

Between us, the words died, strangled in our throats.

In the thin starlight I barely made out the silhouettes limping toward us. Two figures half-dragged, half-carried one between them, and Cat, the smal est, dashed around the edge of the damaged trio, speaking Russian in low and urgent tones.

“You should head to your dad’s tonight.”

“Hel , no. Tel me what’s…”

I rounded on her, my eyes starting to sting as tears threatened. “If you won’t go, at least get out of my way.” I edged her farther inside as they climbed the steps and were bathed in the soft glow thrown by the porch’s single bulb.

Alexi’s weary face was smeared with blood, his shirt torn and spattered with red. Pietr was worse. A gash across his face marked a graze by a bul et. His shirt was ragged, the holes that tattered it edged in crimson. There was blood. Lots of blood. I reached for him even as I realized he wasn’t the worst. He, at least, was walking.

Max, though—Max was a different story.

“Holy shit…”

“Inside,” I ordered Amy.

She scrambled to obey.

“Phone down.” It was al the reminder she needed that the Rusakovas did not dial 911.

She pocketed her cel as we pushed past. “What…?”

“Sometimes it’s better not to know, right?”

She nodded, swal owing the logic she’d spouted earlier.

Cat closed the door behind us, and together we eased Max onto the love seat in the sitting room. “I get tired of replacing furniture.” Cat’s voice wavered.

I reached beneath the marble-top table, brushing the wood with my fingers, remembering the bug I’d left.

But I found nothing. Pietr smiled at me, a grim turn of his lips as blood trickled into one eye from another cut. Knowing the way Max ran his mouth, he’d removed the bug before the risk outweighed the benefit.

“You’re last on the list,” Cat informed Alexi. “Do we need to set a perimeter?”

“
Nyet
. They’l be picking up pieces for a while.”

I didn’t realize Amy had left us until she dashed back into the room, carrying an assortment of bandages and ointments.

“Good girl,” Alexi congratulated her. “Now go home.”

Cat snatched the packages out of Amy’s hands and tore into them. “Pietr. You sit there and try not to bleed al over the upholstery. Max.” She stooped over him. “Max!” She slapped him, her hand cracking across his face.

His eyes pul ed open as he fought for focus. “Sisterrr,” he croaked.